Our Olympic Team

Now that the Olympics are over, experts are looking into their crystal balls trying to figure out how Canada can do better at the next games. Inevitably, the discussion turns around to giving our athletes more funding.

While I am generally positive about the idea of the Olympics, I don’t like the idea of spending more money in the attempt to win medals. Here’s why.

1. It is still pretty well suspected that banned substances still play an important part in athlete performance.

2. Sports that require judging have been surrounded in controversy. Tae Kwan Do has been a disgrace for more than one Olympics. Boxing ranks a close second. Even more respected disciplines, like gymnastics and diving, are not above suspicion.

3. Some athletes are there to gain “experience”. That is another way of saying that they have no hope of getting a medal. Finishing 28th doesn’t warrant a free trip. Make it more difficult to get to the Olympics, then maybe people will perform at a higher level if they want to go badly enough. The money saved could be spent giving athletes more to train.

4. Yes, athletes train hard. Many of them party even harder. In Beijing, 100,000 condoms were available to athletes. For some athletes, years of training resulted in less than 15 seconds of performance if they were eliminated in the first heat of the 100 metres. After that, what do they do for the duration of the Games?

5. The sport system in Canada is inverted in some sports. The power is in the provinces and the national direction is weak. This is evident with some athletes seemingly representing Canada and Quebec, for example. If Canada is on your shirt that is what you are representing, period.

If we are to spend more money, then I make one suggestion. The athletes who receive funding need to give more back to their sport. Parading their talents every four years, then complaining that they don’t get coverage doesn’t do anything for me. There needs to be an outreach to the young kids in Canada. That means the javelin thrower who represents our country should be going into the community and encouraging others to take up the sport.

When I made my first softball team, I remember what my coach said. He asked us to promise to put more back into the sport than we took out of it. I took him seriously. Even in my teens, I was a player, a coach, an umpire and treasurer of the local league.

Finally, our Olympic athletes, with a few exceptions, are not our heroes. I have no idea who represented us in most sports. I feel we could be just as effective as we have been at spreading good will around the world without spending as much money as we do.

Is it impossible to compete without spending vast amounts of money? The best example was the USA’s men’s water polo team. It got very little, if any, funding, yet it won the silver medal.